


Post-War Provender (or: The Hunt For Red Delicious)

by thisgirlreads



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:14:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27940586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisgirlreads/pseuds/thisgirlreads
Summary: How does a housewife survive a nuclear fallout? Go back to the basics.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 7





	Post-War Provender (or: The Hunt For Red Delicious)

The weirdness started in Goodneighbour.

Well, to be more accurate, Preston first _noticed_ the weirdness in Goodneighbour. It’d been there before – extreme interest in Marcy’s long flexible knife that was too whippy to do damage reliably. The hoarding of prewar shortening – the greasy vegetable fats that most people used for fuel. The way she’d leapt at Sturges when she noticed the weighted mace in his pack, some sort of heavy prewar implement with two gears, a folding handle and a tiny useless blade that Sturges had been planning to turn into a more useful weapon.

And the _face_ she made when someone suggested Blamco! Brand Mac ‘n’ Cheese as a lunch option.

But back to Goodneighbour. Preston had followed her as she picked her way along the old Freedom Trail, looking for likely spots to set up a midtown settlement, somewhere small that could sustain itself, be a rest stop for traders, and not draw too much trouble. Preston hoped Nora was getting the message that somewhere a little less hidebound than Diamond, somewhere a little more sensible than the chem ridden heap of Goodneighbour could exist – especially after being threatened for caps, then saved by the junkie ghoul of a mayor by shanking their extorter.

Nora had given the cooling corpse a haunted look as the mayor talked to her, shaking out of it enough to reply vaguely, then firmly fixing her attention on the traders across the square and marching over like a woman on a mission. She still looked haunted through selling their scrounged pipe guns to KL-E-O, and only began to come out of it as she introduced herself to Daisy. Somehow they got onto the topic of how long Daisy’d been around, and Preston settled against a wall to wait, keeping half an ear on the conversation and the rest of his attention on their surroundings in case anybody else got smart ideas to jump the sheltered vaultie.

"So let's hear it. Come on. Tell me what the world was like before the War, if you're so ancient."  
  
"People are people. It was pretty much what we have now, just with less rust. And more fruit. God, I miss apple pie." Preston hear an unexpected thread of joy in Nora’s voice, touched with something manic that had him checking over his shoulder to make sure she wasn’t jumping at Daisy like she had at Sturges. "If you ever get your hands on any fucking cinnamon, I will trade you five fusion cores for it.”

General Beckett’s drawers, Preston didn’t even realise Nora had managed to scrounge up five fusion cores – did she not realise how much they were worth? And what the hell was cinnamon that it was worth that much more? He shifted to cover the doorway to Daisy’s a little more, giving the bald drifter standing a little too near the stink eye to make him move off, then checking to make sure Nora hadn’t pulled the cores out in this craphole.

Daisy was staring at Nora with her soft cheeks and straight white vault teeth like she was a full barrel of fancy lads. She was silent for a moment, then broke out with a stunned murmur “Holy shit, you’re not kidding, kid.”

“I told you,” Nora said softly. “Used to live in Sanctuary Hills. I had a beautiful house, white picket fence… grass greener than anything. But the thing I miss most is just simple home cooked food. Hadn’t had dog ‘til two weeks ago. Didn’t even consider it an option.”

Daisy laughed rustily, swiping a hand over her face. “I’ll drink to that. Even though nowadays I only eat for the taste, I still miss the hell out of a Brown Betty. But I guess you didn’t come here to watch an old woman cry, so c’mon and show me what you want to trade, kid.”

Preston watched Nora pull herself together, tucking her wounded parts back inside again. She unfolded a pair of funky white sunglasses from her pocket and perched them jauntily on her nose. “Sure thing, Daisy. But you keep your eye out, and you’ll be the first I cook a pie for.”

“Sure thing, sister. And you, tall dark and jawsome, you keep care of this one, huh? It’d be nice to have someone to talk to about the old days now and again.”

Preston shuffled to some kind of attention, trying to act like he hadn’t been snooping, and nodded. “Will do, ma’am. General’s one of a kind.”

~

Nora had to find some way to keep her mind. She had to. Her house was creaking rust and ruins, with dead hedges cut into neat boxes. Her husband was dead (Nate, _Nate--_ ) and her baby was gone with a faceless hazmat suit and a man who had no compassion left in his heart.

She’d managed to push herself to Concord, managed to not freak at the rag-wrapped maniacs intent on murder and mayhem, managed to not weep at the first friendly face she’d seen, pleading for her help from a balcony as gunshots echoed inside the old museum.

She’d even managed not to throw up as she shot one of the men- _animals_ ramming at the door inside and his head exploded like an overripe melon, splattering her with gore as the building fell irretrievably silent.

And god, the aftermath-- it felt like a dream still. Sat next to Mama Murphy on that sofa, trembling through an adrenaline rush and listening to Preston desperately trying to plan his way out of trouble, Sturges thumping at an old computer until Nora had to stand up and hipcheck him out of the way, typing in a password Nate had laughed over the VA always using (oh, Nate) and slipping out of the room again to fetch the fusion core in the basement generator.

And then the power armour. The minigun. The Raider spotter on the roof seeing her as she was breathing in tin can oil air and trying to not remember Nate telling her how terrifyingly powerful you felt in one of these things. Shooting down everyone in her path, wide eyed and screaming inside her head at all the human waste. And then, oh god, the monster rising out the sewers like Godzilla brought to life. She’d frozen then, only Preston’s bright laser whipping past her head shaking her out of terror and prompting her to run into the shelter of the clothing store on the corner (She’d bought her dress for the VA party in there only two weeks ago, only two hundred years ago).

She wasn’t sure how she’d managed it, but she had. The monster was dead and she felt like she was floating through the motions, cushioned against it all in her tin can armour until she passed the old fuel station with all of them and her armour gave a tinny beep, then another, and it became ten times heavier and stopped moving like air.

It had taken Sturges and Preston to peel her out of the depleted armour, hyperventilating and crying at the combined stresses of her world being turned upside down and inside out. Marcy had made a snippy comment about having two useless people to take care of and Nora had glared at her and spat the first hurtful words that tumbled out her brain

“My husband is dead and my son’s been kidnapped. You can’t compare to that pain.” And as Marcy made a furious gesture with her dumb whippy knife- “And the fuck do you think you’re kidding, waving around a filleting knife like you could use it as a decent weapon?”

Marcy’s face had pinched tight and she’d made a shaking, furious motion with her weapon again, then she’d shrieked something insensible and slapped the knife to the floor, stalking up the road with tight shoulders. Nora had stared after her, aware from the stillness of her new companions she’d just said something terrible to someone in just as much pain as her, but unable to care very much. She picked the knife up and looked at Jun, at his blank, numb face, then looked away, shrugging off Preston’s helping hand to stand up on her own.

~

Later in Sanctuary, sitting in Rosa’s old home on the ruins of her old sofa, staring at the knife in her hands, turning the whippy blade over and over as she thought, she didn’t notice until Preston sat down next to her.

“Hey. You know- I never got a chance to thank you. You went toe to toe with a Deathclaw for us and kept it together until we were all safe.” Nora nodded vaguely, not reacting until Preston’s hand settled over hers and she sucked in a sharp breath at the warmth of human contact. She looked up at him, startled, and he slipped the knife out of her hands, putting it on a table out of her reach with a gentle look on his face that said he’d had to do this before for other people. Maybe for people he’d lost.

  
“I’m not-- Preston…. Not gonna,-uh.” Nora’s voice cracked and she swallowed around a hot lump in her throat. “I’m not going to do anything stupid. I promise.” She tried a smile and it only came out a little wobbly.

“You’ve been through a lot since you left that vault. Let me know if there’s any way I can help.”

“How- oh. Right. The suit.” Nora looked down at the bright blue target she was wearing as clothing with a downturned mouth.

“That, and you’re just…. Too tidy for a wastelander.” Preston chuckled. “Most of us don’t have perfect teeth like yours. Where is Vault Eleventy-one, though? I’ve never heard of anyone from that one before.”

“You… wouldn’t have. I’m the only one.” Nora grimaced. “It’s...I lived here before the war. I was frozen or something for most of it. Just woke up a little while ago… someone broke in and woke me up-- they… uh, they killed my husband. Stole my son. Froze me again. Then I woke up and--” Nora was aware she was rambling. “Shaun was just a baby.”

“What do you mean? Before what war? Are you saying...”

“Yeah.” Nora looked at Preston with tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry, you think I’m crazy.”

Preston looked like he was about to say something, then sighed and patted her hand gently, changing his mind. “Mama Murphy was right all along about this place being here. If I can believe in the Sight, it’s not a lot further stretch to believe that you could be frozen through all this time. ...Listen, despair is easier, believe me, I know. But if you said your son’s been kidnapped… you’ve got to keep it together for him.”

Nora laughed. “That’s a nice vision, but how the hell can I keep it together for him when I don’t even know where to start?”

Preston gave her a wry grin. “You could start by giving Marcy her knife back.”

“No, it’s mine now,” Nora said stubbornly. “There’s a spare 10mm in my pack she can have, but I’m keeping the knife.”

~

Back to the knife. That stupid filleting knife. Nora had stared at it some more, and then gone into the ruins of her old house, her old kitchen, and put it carefully into the half burnt remains of her knife block. She’d read the notes on the fridge and on the calender and hadn't cried until she’d tried to open the refrigerator and the door had fallen off it’s hinges and landed on her toes.

She’d sworn loudly, Preston had come running, she’d cried, he’d helped her pick up the fragile old paper notes and drag the fridge out to be turned over to scrap, and then she’d come back to stare at the knife some more. Preston (weeks down the line) might have noticed her dumb Thing beginning in Goodneighbour, but for Nora, it began in the ruins of her old house with a stupid filleting knife.

And maybe the way Sturges had cheered at finding some pre-war food in a bunker hidden behind one of the houses further down the close, coming back with a crate of boxes and a cheerful “Looks like it’s mac ‘n’ cheese tonight, Blamco style!”

Before she knew it, Nora was making the same exaggerated retching noise she always used to make with Nate at the Super-Duper Mart and they went down the packet food aisle.

“Yergh! The hell we are!”

She flushed hot with embarrassment as everyone looked at her and Sturges shifted awkwardly, hoisting the crate under one arm to scratch the back of his neck.

“Uh, no guesses as to how plentiful food was in your vault, but out here, we can’t exactly be choosy with what we get to eat.”

“I-- yeah. Sorry. I just...” Nora trailed off awkwardly, realising how scarce food must be. You couldn’t nip down to the super-mart for dinner, or go out to a restaurant, or even order in. You had to make do. It was like being a starving law student again, staunchly Making Do with whatever she had, making herself proud of being able to cook something filling with absolutely anything she had on hand.

….Though that was something, wasn’t it. Whatever she had on hand. Old lady Rosa had had a garden down the back of her house... Gourds and melons and some other things.

“Hold on,” she said slowly. “I think I can cook something a bit better than packet macaroni.”

In the end, after the Blamco had been put away into an only sort-of busted refrigerator (that wouldn’t drop its door on anyone’s toes and still worked as a cupboard), she ended up with some melons from the back garden, two cans of cram from Sturges, some kind of sharp bladed grass which she had to strip the seeds from with careful gloved hands, and some dandelion leaves Jun had found poking through all along Sanctuary’s main road.

Right.

One whippy filleting knife, useless as a weapon, but just about right for skinning the tough peel off of a melon. Boiled grains, with punchy tasting dandelion leaves mixed in for flavour. Cram that she couldn’t open until she’d noticed the heavy industrial can opener Sturges had his hands on and she’d wrestled off him before he could strip it for parts and turn it into a mace. Back to the filleting knife to shave thin slices off the packed (“crammed with flavour!”) meat blocks, folding them over the thick, juicy wedges of melon, and then putting the whole lot over the bed of greens and grain.

Preston had told her to hold on for her son, hadn't he? Well, to do that, she needed to go back to first principles. Hold on for herself first. Food, comfort for the soul, and seeing other people’s faces light up as they realised what was being put in front of them. Nate’s face grinning at her over a plate of food and telling her she was going to be a fantastic mother.

She might just be able to do this.

**Author's Note:**

> This was an attempt at NaNoWriMo 2020 which didn't get past the first chapter - but it works great as it's own standalone tale


End file.
